Tag Archives: book review

Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry – A Satire on Sexual Politics

The book categories Amazon has assigned to the bestselling novel Lessons in Chemistry are “Mothers & Children Fiction,” “Humorous Fiction,” and “Literary Fiction.” All are apt, up to a point. It’s about an unwed mother who is raising an only female child. The plot is suffused with humor and oddball antics. And, yes, the prose in this first novel from Bonnie Garmus is masterful.

Lessons in Chemistry. A frivolous entertainment it’s not.

But the most fitting category, I think, would be something like, “Bitterly Satiric Feminist Fiction.” Main character Elizabeth Zott is a research scientist in the 1950s who is misunderstood and maligned in every conceivable way. When her career in molecular research is blunted and blocked by arrogant males, she steps into the role of daytime TV star, almost by chance. She hosts an afternoon live cooking show – and she decides to use every one of her recipes as a lesson in chemistry – both physical (as in, elements and reagents) and political (advice to housewives who lack self-confidence).

As to comedy, many situations are indeed humorous, but most have a sardonic edge. And some readers may be surprised that Elizabeth’s misfortunes include rape, sudden death of her beloved partner (one of only a few men in the book who act nobly), abusive employment, emotional battering, vicious gossip and character assassination, theft of her scholarly work, and multiple instances of deception and fraud.

Ultimately, funny it’s not meant to be.

Setting the plot in the past – in the consumer-crazed postwar era in America – serves to heighten contrast – in fact, the lack of significant differences – with today’s state of affairs.

Zott’s daughter Madeleine – Mad, for short – is a precocious kid who could read adult-themed novels before she started elementary school.

This book might be an answer to such a child’s question today, “Mommy, who was Gloria Steinem?”

Mick & Moira & Brad – A post-#MeToo story. Is it’s comedy too polite?

 

Physicist Says Thought Will No Longer Be Possible – Thinking About Thinking #45

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A picture of a starry sky over mountains with the text "What remains of consciousness at the end of the universe?"

Here’s my book review of Until the End of Time by astrophysicist Brian Greene.

Book Cover for Brian Greene's Until the End of Time. The book cover shows a starry night sky over a pine forestIt’s the best survey of current theories in cosmology that I’ve read. But it’s also the most unsettling to someone like me who tries continually to reconcile science and theology.

Fans of my Evan Wycliff Mystery series know that Evan is similarly conflicted. A farm boy from southern Missouri from a devout Baptist family, he thought he’d go into the ministry. But then he studied at Harvard Divinity, where learning more about the history of Christianity and its hypocrisies shook his faith. Then, seeking answers to the big questions instead in science, he enrolled in postgrad astrophysics at MIT. He dropped out of that program, too. Discouraged and heartbroken for other personal reasons, Evan returned to farmland roots, where he got occasional work as a guest preacher and a credit investigator for the local car dealer.

Evan is a preacher who some days is an agnostic. And he’s an amateur sleuth because he has investigative skills. People in his community come to him with problems that no one else has any interest in solving.

So – no surprise – from the standpoint of intellectual curiosity, Evan and I are a lot alike.

Two conclusions in Greene’s book would startle us both. First, there can be no such thing as eternity. The universe is about 14 billion years old and has more than double that time before it expires. But, according to Greene, expire it will – expanding and disintegrating into cosmic dust, then expanding more until particles are so far apart they can’t form any solid mass – no galaxies, no stars, no planets.

Now, from the viewpoint of the philosopher or mystic, eternity is not simply a long, long time. Or even a timeline that has no end. It’s a state of being. Time-less – an incomprehensible notion for the human mind.

But more disturbing still is Greene’s assertion that – long before the universe expires – thought itself won’t be possible. Thought in humans is biochemically supported electrical activity in the brain. When the cosmos becomes diffuse, no such complex structures will exist.

Book cover for The Feeling of Life Itself by Christof Koch. The cover is an abstract illustration of gray waves with the title displayed in red text.Now, unaddressed in Greene’s survey is the question of whether consciousness and thought are aspects of the same physical process. Some scientists, including Christoph Koch, have tried to explain consciousness as super-complex electrical activity in the brain. Koch has found no such explanation. He theorizes that computers, no matter how complex, can never be conscious. In his book The Feeling of Life Itself, at the conclusion he can only guess that consciousness is some as yet unmeasurable, fundamental property of the universe, a feeling shared by all living things, in various degrees depending on the complexity of their brains. For rigorous scientist Koch, it’s little more than a guess.

Where is God in all this? Our religious traditions hold that God is pervasive consciousness and eternal. Another hypothesis of Greene and his colleagues is the so-called godless universe. That is, the dual processes of entropy (diffusion) and evolution (ever-increasing complexity) are sufficient to explain everything that exists.

Which brings us to the most elusive question of all, one that philosophers have debated for centuries, which also has the scientists stumped:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

The paperback copy of "Preacher Raises the Dead" on a yellow background with text reading "Preacher Raises the Dead: An Evan Wycliff Mystery. The third book in the series"

Book Review: Silverview by John le Carré

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Silverview is the last novel John le Carré (David Cornwell) completed before his death in December of 2020. It was just released in the US by Viking Penguin. The hardcover edition includes an Afterword by the author’s son Nick Cornwell, who is a writer himself using the name Nick Harkaway.

Silverview, the last spy novel by John Le Carré (Viking Penguin)

As my friends and fans know, I’m a longtime admirer of le Carré, and I believe that, to rate him as “The premier spy novelist of our time. Perhaps of all time” (Time), is an underestimation. In his novels, the spy story is a metaphor and a model for not only the geopolitical strife between nations but also the loyalties and betrayals between human beings – in their most intimate and personal transactions. I’d say William Boyd’s comment in The New Statesman comes closer: “We should see him as our contemporary Dickens.”

Two recurring themes in le Carré are that humans almost always betray their loved ones, and skilled spies (like readers) must be obsessively attentive close observers. By strewing hints, clues, and foreshadowing in narratives rich in dazzling but often extraneous detail, he teaches you not only how spies think but also how to read with critical intelligence, especially between the lines.

I’ll risk asserting that fans of le Carré will find nothing new in Silverview. But consider this a feature and not a flaw. If you’ve read and paid close attention to his other novels, you will be quick to recognize the suspicious cover stories, the simple and seemingly innocent methods of exchanging word codes and documents, and – at the core of all of it – the ways double agents double back on their professed loyalties, at the same time serving and betraying their countries, while twisting their personal lives and loves inside out.

As I say, recognizing these plot elements on first appearance may give you the satisfaction that you’ve aced the course at Sarratt, the Circus spy academy. Perhaps then you are ready to recognize, face up to, and deal with the loyalties and betrayals in your own life. I guarantee you will pay closer attention to what other authors are trying to express.

All this said, it will come as no surprise that I respectfully disagree with Nick Cornwell’s assessment of this book:

“… Silverview does something that no other le Carré novel ever has. It shows a service fragmented: filled with its own political factions, not always kind to those it should cherish, not always very effective or alert, and ultimately not sure, any more, that it can justify itself.”

I beg to differ. The close observer knows that John le Carré has been saying this all along.

Evan Wycliff mystery-thrillers have won five awards including both Gold and Silver in the NYC Big Book awards. The audiobook for the first in the series is available from Audible, iTunes, Google Play, and other distributors worldwide.

Book Review – An Unlikely Truth by John Rachel

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Here’s my book review of An Unlikely Truth, a novel by John Rachel.

(Not to be confused with An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore or A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré.)

Democracy at both the local and national levels recently has been under savage assault. In this fictional story, protagonist Martin Truth’s fight was one of many such struggles to restore the meaning of representative government to a system that had been corrupted by big money and corporate power.

In this political drama, a bright, young, idealistic Green Party candidate, in his bid for the congressional seat of a conservative district in Ohio, teams with a beautiful, fiery, African-American intern to combat the slick deceptions and ruthless tactics of a sweet-talking right-wing incumbent.

This is the inspiring story of a small committed group of activists who either never knew or have forgotten the meaning of the word impossible. More importantly, it embodies hope that not all is lost, that there’s a narrative which can begin to put America back on track and render government again of the people by the people and for the people

An Unlikely Truth was published in 2014, just as the early presidential primaries got underway and well before the sensational and controversial election of 2016. Both before and after the election, there was a resurgence of grassroots political action on both the left and the right. If you’re among the people who fear that the politics of hope, are a thing of the past, you will probably regard this book as dated. If instead you describe yourself as an activist john Rachel’s vision of America may look like a glimpse of the future.

Update note: In today’s “post-truth” era, and considering all that has transpired in American politics since 2016, the question remains: Are the “politics of hope” so… yesterday?

Harry Harambee'd Kenyan Sundowner: A Novel

Harry never planned to reinvent his life at this age. He went from tourist and passive observer to reluctantly committed resident. Here is conspiracy and intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean.

 

Thinking About Thinking #40 – I Do and I Don’t – Marriage themes in the movies

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Here’s my book review of I Do and I Don’t: A History of Marriage in the Movies by Jeanine Basinger.

Basinger is professor of film studies at Wesleyan University, my alma mater, and during her tenure there, she’s been mentor to many of the Hollywood filmmakers who are today referred to as the Wesleyan Mafia. She is one of the most influential of our present-day film historians.

I Do and I Don’t is a critical survey of studio pictures from the silent era up through recent times. Movies in America were formally censored during the ’Thirties and ’Forties, the main reason that even into the ’Fifties, all screen married couples slept in twin beds. The rich ones had separate bedrooms, perhaps for other reasons. But Basinger emphasizes that Hollywood’s view on marriage evolved over the decades for primarily commercial reasons – to appeal to the people – most of them women – who bought tickets.

First off, if you’re considering writing a screenplay about your happy marriage, forget it. Even before the talkies, moviemakers understood that happy couples are just plain boring. Conflict is drama, as Aristotle once said. And the most hilarious romantic comedies are the same, with the volume turned way up.

Basinger tells us that marriage movies are rooted in problems, including money, infidelity, children, illness, death, and forced separation.

In every era, the studios were skilled at giving the audience what it wanted but might not admit – namely stories about their secret fears and suppressed desires. In the movies, any misbehavior, any sin, any abusive behavior can be indulged in, as long as the responsible party is punished before the lights come back up. That way, the audience can leave the theater feeling both satisfied and self-righteous.

Take for example George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib, in which Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are trial lawyers married to each other and squared off as opposing counsel on the same case. In the famous massage scene, Tracy gives Hepburn a playful slap. She takes it the wrong way, and the scene ends as she gives him a swift kick in the ankle. If that movie were made today, you know her aim would be higher.

Thinking About Thinking #38 – The Gravity Well – A trap or a dwelling place?

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Here’s my book review of The Gravity Well: America’s Next Greatest Mission by Steven Sanford.

Steven Sanford was trained as a research engineer and spent almost three decades as a NASA employee when he left the agency recently to work for a contract engineering firm. He was Director for Space Technology and Exploration at NASA’s Langley Research Center. The gravity well refers to the huge physical effort required to overcome the Earth’s pole and climb into space. It is the first and most significant challenge of space travel. Having attained escape velocity from our planet and venturing far enough up and out, a space vehicle will have the option to park in one of several fixed locations called Lagrangian points. At these distances, gravitational forces are balanced, such that location can be maintained indefinitely, with no further expenditure of energy.

This is the logical place to build space stations. The Gravity Well, the book, is in effect Sanford’s heartfelt, elaborately reasoned letter to US taxpayers and members of Congress. The single most beneficial thing we can do to stimulate the economy and reset national priorities would be to augment the relatively modest NASA budget by a third.

The current authorization is about $19 billion. Sanford argues persuasively for $30 billion.

He doesn’t even propose we take the hit all at once. His proposal is for Congress to increase that budget by $1.2 billion per year for 8 years. His proposal is precise, achievable, and modest. Its diminutive fiscal size becomes apparent when you compare it with the voracious requirements of the Department of Defense, which exceeds a half-trillion dollars per year. And that’s not counting the supplemental allocations for various wars.

Sanford’s argument is also straightforward: No single expenditure by the federal government holds the prospect of producing such generous returns.

For example, he points out, “A single asteroid, no wider than your living room, can contain $10 billion worth of gold, along with platinum, tungsten, and the rare-earth metals we desperately need here where supplies are running low.”

And you don’t even have to conquer a third-world nation or fight a war with some other superpower to grab this stuff. (That’s my inference, not his explicit point.) Your tightfisted representative might well ask, “Why can’t private industry do this?” Well, it can and it will. But the history of all major technological advances is marked by government taking the early steps reducing risk and forging a path of entry for private investment. Computers, micro electronics, the Internet, and the telecom backbone all have their origins in broadly funded government initiatives bold. Brash and ambitious as are Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, none would have dared invest in advanced rocketry if the basic engineering were not already mature.

Sanford cites a little-known example that aviation itself might have taken much longer to evolve – if at the end of World War I the US Postal Service hadn’t gambled the then-colossal sum of $5 million to fund transcontinental airmail service.

Let’s start by making every member of Congress aware of the gravity Well. Let’s also make it required reading in high school – and our manifesto for a grassroots political movement. Let’s inspire America to a new vision of world leadership that emphasizes international cooperation for mutual benefit. And dare we hope for not just survival but a grander destiny.

However, I’m not predicting immediate success. I hope I’m wrong. But Sanford’s proposal seemed to well reasoned and too eminently logical to have any effect on public policy in the near term. If national pride drove the swelling of the defense establishment. reallocating money to space would be easy. But it’s widespread fear that motivates the building of redundant piles of weaponry. Congress today is full of unscrupulous, self-interested politicians who, despite their patrician educations, find that sneering at science and leveraging the public’s fears get them votes.

Can we seriously believe that an Ivy-League trained-lawyer has so little understanding of science as to scoff at evolution, climatology, and the obvious need for population control? For Sanford’s plan to work, the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Laura Sinclair (that’s the January 2017 Woman Physicist of the Month) need to run for office.

And sooner rather than later, we need a better educated electorate that respects learning more than celebrity.

Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. Maybe the next best thing to being there?

Thinking About Thinking #36 – 13 Reasons Why

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Here’s my book review of Thirteen Reasons Why, a novel by Jay Asher.

Thirteen Reasons Why is the fictional story behind a teenage suicide. It has two first-person narrators – Hannah Baker, the girl who decided to end her own life, and Clay Jensen, who presumably was one of the thirteen 13 motivations for her tragic choice. Clay comes into possession of a box of audiocassette tapes – an outdated format in this age of mp3 – but it’s relatively secure because the analog recordings can’t be copied as easily and shared at a click with your thousand closest friends on Facebook.

Hannah dictated the tapes to tell the story behind her decision to end her life in an odd – and you could well say pointless – act of revenge. She has devised a routing plan so that each of the people who wronged her will be forced to listen. And she has included a scheme to betray their guilty secrets if any one of them goes public with the information – or doesn’t keep this audio chain-letter moving from one perpetrator to the last – at which point the tapes must be destroyed.

Hannah’s story unfolds to us (the readers), as Clay plays the tapes in sequence for himself. All along he’s wondering about – and dreading – what role he had in, and what responsibility he might hold for, her death.

What’s striking to me as a mature adult – mature, at least in years – is how mundane and relatively innocuous these slights seem. I don’t think there’s much here that would cause an adult to take the high jump to oblivion. There’s bullying of various kinds, sexual and emotional abuse by young men, along with snubs and betrayals by her female peers. Hannah seems to fear she’s an ugly duckling. But she’s hardly thinking that the boys seem drawn to her by her sheer attractiveness. She doesn’t provoke their advances, and for the most part, she doesn’t give into them.

There is an incident of date rape, but Hannah is not its victim. She’s a witness, and she blames herself for its happening. But it’s not necessarily one of the reasons she decides to end it all. I’m not sure why she does. In the world of adults, traumas like divorce, job loss, financial insolvency terminal illness, and death can trigger severe emotional breakdowns. But there’s none of that in Hannah’s background. In general, cruel gossip can be a destroyer of egos, but not the basic will to live.

I’ve heard it said that deep despair is the result – not of losing happiness – but losing the hope of ever having any happiness. And I suppose that’s what destroys Hannah.

I won’t insert the spoiler here of how Clay was or wasn’t involved. But I wonder about novelist Jay Asher. This was his first fiction book, and some would say he hit the ball out of the park. The book and the audio book have been bestsellers. It’s won all kinds of awards, and it’s been made into a cable series on Netflix. So he knows how to tell a story, one that engages the angst of tweens and teens. I’m no mental health expert, but I don’t think Jay Asher’s understanding of clinical depression or suicide is particularly deep. He said in interviews that he had a close relative who considered suicide but survived. If any of his young readers think Hannah’s are compelling reasons to just give up, I think that’s more than a shame.

Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A great “beach read” even if you won’t actually be camped out on the shore.

Thinking About Thinking #35 – A Nasty Piece of Work – Should old spies just stay home?

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Here’s my book review of A Nasty Piece of Work: A Novel, a crime thriller by Robert Littell.

Littell has written sophisticated spy novels, including The Amateur. It would be glib to say A Nasty Piece of Work literally lives up to its title. It is a workmanlike, formula-gumshoe detective novel. The protagonist Lemuel Gunn is a worn-out, burned-out, world-weary intelligence operative. He’s retired to the desert. He gets dragged into a case and a buddied-up search by a beautiful young dame, Omelia Neppi.

The bad guys are unscrupulous and vicious, with mob ties embedded in the gambling racket. In the formula detective novel, the beautiful girl is trouble. In this case, our Omelia comes on like an ally, acting as an assistant investigator who knows where to find the crumb trail. Gunn eventually learns that she’s embroiled him in her plot to seek revenge on the perps.

The ending dishes out great gobs of graphic violence – justified Charles-Bronson style – because the guy by now has permission to give back as good as he and his client have gotten.

If you like pulp fiction – and a new idea that has withstood the test of time – go for it. Granted, authors of spy thrillers have had to rethink their missions since the Cold War, but this one in my opinion was a wrong turn for Mr. Littell.

What will you be inspired to do? Venturing to East Africa, Harry goes from being a passive observer as a tourist to an involved and committed resident. Two book awards (so far!) in 2021.

Thinking About Thinking #34 – Cutting for Stone – Would you trust your barber to cut you open?

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I have to start by clearing up the confusion I had with Abraham Verghese’s title, Cutting for Stone. As the book mentions several times but never precisely explains, the reference is to the Hippocratic Oath, “I will not cut for stone.” However I had to look it up in Wikipedia to find the meaning, which is probably apparent to medical professionals. It was a prohibition from operating on stones, or calcified deposits, in the kidney or bladder. The ancient Greeks apparently thought surgeons should leave this menial procedure to barbers. The modern meaning seems to be that doctors should recognize they can’t specialize in all areas. But I’d say closer to the original intent, and perhaps more relevant to today’s medicine, would be: “I won’t perform treatments just for the sake of making money.”

Okay, I got that off my chest!

The title has at least a double meaning. The story flows from the unlikely and surprising conception of a pair of twins by an English surgeon, Thomas Stone, and an Indian-born nun, Sister Mary Praise, in Ethiopia in the mid-twentieth century. The story is narrated by one of the twins, Marion, who eventually becomes a surgeon himself.

Verghese is likewise a practicing surgeon, now living in the U.S., who grew up in Ethiopia. His account seems autobiographical, but much of it is invented, as he explains in detail in his Acknowledgments.

If I say too much about this book, I’ll have to throw in a lot of spoilers, and suspense has its delicious rewards in this leisurely paced plot. So I won’t. Suffice it to say, I believe your patience with Verghese will be rewarded.

I heard him speak at a book signing at an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles, and he mentioned that he admired W. Somerset Maugham. This book does remind me of Cakes and Ale, in more ways than one, including the crafting of its sentences. (Maugham also studied medicine.) It’s not the page-turning, plain-vanilla, cliffhanger prose of Tom Clancy or Dan Brown. It’s thoughtful, colorful, and literary. Slow down and enjoy it.

This novel is about family, community, betrayal, parental love and estrangement, sibling bonding and rivalry, personal bravery, not-so-uncommon acts of kindness, the heroic practice of medicine, suffering and compassion–and irony.

Lots of irony.

Cutting for Stone is selling well, so lots of other people must think it’s worthwhile. The story doesn’t read like a movie plot, but neither does The English Patient. Yes, this book is that big–in its scope and its ambitions, and in the magnitude of its achievement.

Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. Two book awards this year in literary fiction.

Thinking About Thinking #33 – The Girl on the Train – Does betrayal justify revenge?

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There was such a buzz about The Girl on the Train, I couldn’t help myself. Especially since, after I’d downloaded the ebook sample, that Buy Now button was burning a hole in my digital wallet.

Yes, I was engrossed. But before you rush out to the e-store, be warned.

Right off, this is a book for and about women. The two male main characters – both thirty-something husbands – are strapping hunks of man-flesh. They exude charm and flash winning smiles. And they are both abusers. Several walk-on male characters are nicer, sort of metrosexual candidates. But one has a drug habit, another is a drunk, and the third is a spineless shrink.

The wives and ex-wives are smart but vulnerable, emotional sponges thirsty for guy-sweat. They spend a lot of their emotional energy in cat-fights with each other.

Okay, here’s the gist of it. The Girl on the Train is a chilling psychological drama centered – not on a love triangle, but a pentagon – or is it a hexagon? Anyway, the permutations and combinations don’t quite include the entire neighborhood.

Main character Rachel is recently divorced from Tom, who seems like a nice guy who just couldn’t put up with her drinking habit. (She had her reasons.) He’s now married to Anna and they have a new baby. The couple live in a the same bungalow where Tom and Rachel once thought they were happy. A few doors down, Scott and Megan seem like childless lovebirds. Megan occasionally babysits for Anna.

Although it’s been a while since the breakup, Rachel can’t help spying on her old house from the commuter train she takes to work in London every day. She occasionally catches sight of Megan and Scott lounging on the porch of their cookie-cutter cottage. She doesn’t know them well, but she develops a fantasy about their perfect relationship. It’s the relationship Rachel thought she had with Tom, a love now presumably lost.

It turns out that Rachel is more than casually curious about Tom and Anna. Rachel is a stalker. She phones him at all hours, she leaves notes at the house, and she wanders the neighborhood as she stares at the front door.

One night when she’s there, neighbor Megan goes missing.

A problem is – and it’s huge – when Rachel has been drinking she’s prone to mental blackouts. There are whole chunks of time – from minutes to hours – for which she has no memory. So combined with her guilt and self-loathing over her failed marriage, Rachel begins to wonder whether she’s been bad. Maybe really, really bad?

Like, maybe, did she somehow hurt perfect-housewife Megan? And what happened to Megan, anyway? Did she run off with a lover, or will they find her body in a ditch?

That’s as far as I’ll go. No more spoilers. But I’m just priming the pump. This is a big book, and, by turns, Rachel, Anna, and Megan tell their first-person stories.

Debut novelist Paula Hawkins knows her craft. At its basis, The Girl on the Train is an ingeniously twisted  mystery. It’s a woman-jeopardy plot with multiple victims. But, be warned, there are occasional bouts of intense domestic violence.

You might wonder whether this bestseller will be a movie, and apparently it will. DreamWorks has it in pre-production with Tate Taylor (The Help) to direct. Emily Blunt has been cast in the title role of Rachel. In the book she’s described as pudgy and somewhat homely. I guess Hollywood (UK office?) thought that was a bad idea. I doubt if the svelte Ms. Blunt will be donning a fat-suit or actually putting on weight for this role. Perhaps a touch less makeup, dear? [Update: The movie has been released.]

As I say, this is a big book, and what probably won’t make it to script or screen are Rachel’s agonizing internal monologues.

But what you will see, I can predict, is every one of those wife-battering fights.

Even more titillating to movie audiences than a good wartime firefight with semiautomatic weapons is to see some sweaty guy slapping his hot babe around.

  When no one else seems to care, Evan Wycliff wants to know why his friend died. Behind the sleepy life of a farm town in Southern Missouri, century-old plots and schemes play out.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.